EarthX 2024 Congress of Conferences, a Noteworthy Event
By Allen Campbell, JD, MBA
Last week I attended the EarthX Congress of Conferences here in Dallas. I was a speaker at last year’s event.
This year the event was well-organized, interesting and factual. I’m sure everyone appreciated the healthy blend of urgency and optimism. Topics included Clean Energy Choices, the Circular Economy, Partnerships for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Rotary Club initiatives, How Public and Private Partnerships Can Solve the Climate Crisis, Towards a Grand Political Alliance for the Planet, Island State Resilience, Uses of Artificial Intelligence, Carbon Credits, Bioremediation, and Oceans and the Blue Economy. Once again, this year there was a lot of attention paid to forestry management and wildfires. (Did you know that AI prevented over 1,000 forest fires in California in 2023?)
EarthX was founded and is led by Dallas billionaire philanthropist Trammell Crow. His views are expressed in the book In This Together: How Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists and Activists Are Uniting to Tackle Climate Change and More (In This Together by Trammell Crow and Bill Shireman | eBay).
As it currently stands, EarthX has six main components:
- The Congress of Conferences: an annual event, consisting this year of five days of expert information and useful, pleasant networking.
- Earth Day Expo: an environmental expo held annually in Dallas. It has grown to be one of the largest events of its kind in the world, with an average of 177,000 attendees, 300 exhibitors, 450 speakers, and 2,000 conferees.
- EarthX Film Festival: a year-round environmental film movement.
- EarthX Media: notably EarthX TV: an international TV network dedicated to promoting the environment and sustainability. “Celebrating the people, places, creatures, and cultures that make our planet worth protecting.”
- EarthX Initiatives.
- E-Capital Summit: brings together family offices, entrepreneurs, companies of all sizes, dealmakers, and the innovation ecosystem of incubators, accelerators, research labs, policy makers, academics, universities, non-profits and thought leaders.
I especially appreciated the information presented about the United Nations and the SDGs. The notion of Sustainability and ESG originated in the UN. It was helpful and frankly gratifying to learn about the resources available to help people connect with the UN, which is a large, complex and bureaucratic organization that can seem daunting even to well-intended individuals and organizations that want to align themselves with the SDGs and related UN programs.
I recommend EarthX to anyone who appreciates civility and wants to become better informed about environmental matters. It’s a great place to make useful connections.
We look forward to welcoming you to Dallas.